Leonardo saw the human body as a “lesser world” in terms of physical structures and dynamics. This session explores Leonardo's breathtaking observations on nature, covering anatomy, physiology, geology, and paintings with landscapes.

Leonardo showed us just how the engineer must work with natural law to design viable schemes. His designs of instruments for the management of water are particularly compelling. His works also show how warfare leads to the destruction of nature.

Leonardo unveiled that there are things we can know and things we cannot. He emphasises the role of “experience” and experiment in pursuit of knowledge. This lesson explains the move of Leonardo’s early certainties to uncertainty. He adopts the doctrine of “double truth” and "the ineffable", something modern physics is now exploring.

This lesson outlines how Leonardo explores the rules of mathematics in nature, including systems of proportion, arithmetic and the rule of numbers. He places a special emphasis on geometry and incommensurable (irrational) proportions. Leonardo's approach shows us how he saw human creations in this mathematical context through knots, bearings, gears and temples.

Through Leonardo, we learn about the value of "lateral seeing". In this lesson, selected works of Leonardo's art are looked at in chronological order, together with their scientific aspects such as vortices, light, music, anatomies, physiognomics, bodily mechanics, the folding of cloth and optics.

Leonardo's refusal to compartmentalise knowledge stands in sharp contrast to our systems of learning, which constrain our ability to relate the parts to the whole in creative syntheses. Leonardo's thinking methods might just allow us to make more sense of the complexities of our 21st-century world.